


Call It What You Want

by Aja



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Age Difference, Future Fic, M/M, Max looked up the age of consent he's good he's great, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 09:16:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13097025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: After his high school graduation, Max comes back to Camp Campbell for one last reunion with David — and David isn't prepared for it. At all.Fortunately for both of them, Max knows exactly what he wants.





	Call It What You Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Hokuto! You wanted older Max and confused David/Max makeouts — you got it! I had so much fun writing this, they're a really fun and sweet ship and I thank you for giving me an excuse to write them. I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Thanks also to E for hand-holding, cheerleading, and typo-ridding! <3!

“Oh, hey,” Gwen says while they’re sweeping up wood shavings from the most recent totally non-appropriative, not-really-a-totem-carving contest. “Got a text from your boy.”

For a moment David thinks she’s talking about his ex. It’s true Jack has been incessantly texting and DMing him since the breakup, but reaching out to Gwen seems a bit bizarre even for him — and then it hits him.

“You don’t mean Max?” he says, and she digs out her phone.

 _Hey_ , the convo reads. That’s it, just: _Hey_. Below it there’s a blurry pixelated picture of Gwen holding the snow globe Space Kid — er, Neil — gave her the day it snowed all those years ago. David grins, even as he’s wondering why Max has never bothered to text _him_. It’s not like they haven’t kept in touch — at least, they have each other friended on Facebook, which David knows probably cost Max a considerable amount of pride. He knows Max has kept up with his other camp friends and occasionally talked to them over the years, because once or twice he’ll see Max in the comments to one of their posts. Their exchanges usually go like this:

David: Max! How’s it hanging, buddy?  
Max: middlefinger.jpg  
David: Great talk! 

These exchanges have happened pretty much like clockwork once every few months or so over the years, and there’s almost a rhythmic comfort to them — though once, not too long ago, after David’s granddad passed away and he’d dumped Jack, he made one of those unwise self-indulgent pity posts and had been surprised later to see Max’s name coming up on the “likes” list, the lone angry emoji in a sea of sad faces. It had been kind of thoughtful, in that way that only Max could perform thoughtfulness, and it had honestly cheered him up. 

David even went to Max’s graduation in May, though he barely got to do more than wave and send Max a thumbs up from amid the sea of relatives that seemed to be amassing around him. It had been the first time he’d seen Max in years and he hadn’t been able to get over how tall he was now. Max had caught his eyes and his perpetual grimace had softened for a moment. He had nodded a thanks and an awkward smile before someone — maybe a grandmother or an aunt — had tugged him away. 

David has thought about that moment a lot since then. He’s thought a lot about Max over the years, has wondered if Max’s parents ever got their heads out of their asses and realized what a cool kid they had.

“How long did he have to hold on to that photo?” he wonders aloud.

“I know, right?” Gwen laughs. “That kid would make an amazing blackmailer. Hell, he probably _is_ an amazing blackmailer.” She looks up. “How old is he now?” Like David would know, even though he does know, which is totally beside the point.

“Oh. Uh, I dunno, seventeen, I think. He just graduated.”

“Is he going to school?”

“I think he got into Boulder. I don’t know what he’s studying, though.” David can hear his voice flattening out, like graduating and getting into the University of Colorado are no big deals, and he wonders why he’s doing it, why he’s trying to sound unimpressed and detached, here. He’s proud as _hell_ of Max, and he’s rarely _as hell_ of anything.

“We should ask him to come back,” Gwen says. “While he’s still here. Hey, maybe he can be an honorary camp counselor.”

“What?” David stops sweeping. 

Gwen shrugs. “We’ve got the budget to hire another counselor for a week or two. Ever since you got the camp designated a pro-life de-gaying creationist site we’ve been rolling in grant money.”

“And you wanna use all the profit from our flagrant deception to hire _Max_? Max, of all people?”

Gwen grins. “Can you think of any kid more fitting to hire out of a budget you got by claiming Lake Lilac was formed from God’s Sneeze?”

She has a point, David thinks, but before he can haggle with her over the details, she’s bending over her phone and typing furiously. 

“He’d never say yes,” David says, just as the phone dings in reply. 

“Ha!” Gwen says. She holds it out to him.

_Hey, bro! Do you want to come hang out with us at camp for a few weeks?_

_MOTHERFUCKING DO I EVER._

“Holy shit,” blurts David.

 

 

There is one huge, glaring problem with Max’s return to camp, and David can’t stop staring at it.

David had thought Max coming to camp would be one of those things that required planning and arranging, but Max was pretty much like, “okay, whatever,” and showed up in the mess hall two days after Gwen’s text with a backpack, a duffel bag, and what looks like a volume of manga — though David has been trying not to look at it too closely because he’s been trying not to look at Max too closely. 

The thing about seeing Max at graduation is that Max had been a distance away and dwarfed in a robe. When he shows up to camp, Max is wearing a tight t-shirt and drawstring cargo shorts, and if not for the fact that his hair is as thick and his smile as sharp as ever, David would have a hard time believing this is the same kid who once replaced all the whipped cream on dessert night with shaving cream as a philosophical experiment to see who would scrape off the topping and keep right on eating.

Then there’s the fact that Max’s shorts are loose and he evidently prefers boxers, which is very in-character, and David can’t figure out where to plant his eyes, especially when Max says, “Hey,” and smirks up at him like he knows exactly what David is thinking, which is completely uncalled for. 

“You look good,” Max says, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. His t-shirt rides partway up the length of his abdomen.

“Hi,” David says. “Um. You — you look... older.”

“I’m seventeen,” Max says.

“You look seventeen,” says David.

“And you... look thirty-one?” Max says uncertainly.

“What? No,” says David. “What gave you that idea? Do I look like I’m over thirty? _Really_?”

“I thought you were... I remember distinctly, you said you were 24 on your Tinder profile,” Max says. 

David laughs, a little hysterically, because of all the conversations he’d expected to have with Max in the event that he ever saw Max again, this was nowhere on the list.

“Oh, that,” he says. “I was always trying to look older back then. Everybody thought I had such a babyface that whenever I told anyone what my _actual_ age was, they’d treat me like I was a teenager, so I started aging myself up so they’d average around to my real age.”

Max’s nose wrinkles, as if it had never occurred to him that David might _lie_ , and, okay, wait, that’s adorable. _Fuck_ , what is even happening right now? David thinks.

“So how fucking old are you?” Max demands.

“Uh,” says David, because this conversation has him all confused and he has to think about it. “26. I’ll be 27 in October.”

“I’ll be 18 in August,” says Max, and his face is doing something weird. It’s like he’s... recalibrating.

“Congratulations?” says David.

“Right,” says Max. “Should I put my shit in your cabin?”

“Oh,” says David. “In my cabin?”

“You wanted me to be a counselor,” says Max. “Should I not be in the counselor’s cabin?”

“No, you should!” says David. “Yes. Do that.”

“Right,” says Max again, and he turns to leave the mess hall, only to run smack into Gwen.

“Are you shitting me?” says Gwen after she’s hugged Max and ruffled his hair, and left David feeling weird for not having hugged Max and ruffled his hair, and then even weirder for thinking that hugging Max and ruffling his hair would be _extremely_ weird.

“What?” says Max, looking put out and a little rumpled from all the hair ruffling, and, okay, David has no idea where his eyes go anymore.

“Did you seriously show up at my camp wearing an Antifa shirt?” says Gwen, pointing at it. Max looks down at his t-shirt and smirks unapologetically. “Take it off,” Gwen orders.

“Right now? I just got here,” says Max.

“And we’re being watched by the feds because our owner used this place as a money laundering scheme,” Gwen retorts. 

“Still? That was like a decade ago.”

“Seven years. Seven long years in which I have still somehow been unable to find the holy grail full-time job that would allow me to leave this place. Now: Off.”

So Max says, “Fine,” and then Max takes his shirt off.

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” Gwen is still saying half an hour later. 

“I’m fine,” David insists. “I just suddenly forgot to breathe out of nowhere and need to relearn how. Sudden onset asthma. Happens all the time.”

When David finally returns to his cabin he’s hoping that Max won’t be in it, that instead he’ll be out somewhere greeting children and being a good role model, and — okay, who is he kidding. He knocks tentatively on the door before entering. “Yo,” Max calls out, and David enters to find Max still shirtless, lying on his own bed with his manga open before him.

“You’re into comics?” David asks as an icebreaker, sitting on his own bed. “Or Japanese art, or both?”

Max shrugs. “All of it, I guess. I’m gonna take some art classes next semester, maybe.”

“Oh. That’s good.” David swallows. “I —I’m really proud of you, Max. You’re doing great.”

Max scowls, says, “Yeah, well,” and then bites his lip, then closes the manga and sits up to face him.

“So,” he says, his eyes bright. “You know I didn’t come here because I wanted to bond and mentor kids and shit, right?”

“Well,” David begins. “I had hoped that the many positive and nurturing experiences you had here at Camp Camp would have created a lasting impression and instilled within you the desire to enrich the lives of other kids like yourself by helping provide them with a similarly fun-filled and rewarding environment.”

Max just stares at him with a strange mix of disbelief and baffled fondness. David fights valiantly not to blush but doesn’t quite manage it.

“No,” says Max after another moment of watching David squirm. “I just thought it’d be — you know. I could say I’d seen you and stuff before I went away.”

“See me,” David repeats. “You wanted to see me?”

“I could still change my mind about that,” Max says, narrowing his eyes. “Hey, you mind if I smoke?”

“Don’t — wait, what?” David says, because Max is digging out, good lord, is that _drug paraphernalia_?

“Good lord, is that _drug paraphernalia_?” David exclaims.

Max says, “Dude. Really? It’s Colorado, this stuff is all legal now.” He holds out his bong. “Besides, my guy is really good, you should try his stash.”

“It may be legal,” David says firmly, “but marijuana is decidedly _not_ in the spirit of Camp Campbell.”

Max sniffs. “You’re not my dad,” he says. 

“I know I’m not your dad,” David says. “I know that.”

“Really,” says Max, shooting him a sidelong glance. He’s effortless, David realizes suddenly, at being sly. He’s _captivating_ in his slyness. How had David never realized how _good_ he was at it? Had David always just been innocently going along, snowed under by Max’s slyness?

Almost certainly.

“Look,” he says. “You can smoke, but only in here, and only after 11 pm, when all the campers are in bed.”

Max frowns. “What if I wake up super early?”

David snorts. “You’re seventeen, you’re not going to wake up early.”

“Well, what if we just don’t go to bed?” Max counters, and David’s mouth is suddenly instantly dry. He has no idea how that happened. It’s shocking, or rather it should be shocking. David will be shocked any moment now, really.

“Oh,” says Max slowly, deliberately. “Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. “I meant, what if _I_ just don’t go to bed?”

David stares at him and then makes a conscious choice to remember that he’s an adult and he’s in command of this situation and that Max is still his favorite irascible insatiable exasperating adorable camper, just... just _taller_. And sleeping in his cabin every night for the foreseeable future.

Right.

He snorts. “You do realize you’re going to have to go do counselor things while you’re here at some point, right?” he says. “You can’t just hide out in here hanging out with me and getting high. You have to go _play_ with _children_. And children, my friend, are _exhausting_.”

Max glowers. “I know what kids are like,” he says. “I’ve observed them in the wild.”

“Do you,” says David smugly. “Well. Let’s see how much energy you have left over after a full day of chasing them around the lake and trying to keep them from burning down the mess hall.”

“Fine,” says Max, and then he laughs. “Like it’s gotta be that hard if you do it.”

“Hearty har har,” says David. “We’ll see who’s laughing by tomorrow night.”

Max’s smirk just deepens.

David doesn’t have much time to think too hard about this because he and Max and Gwen spend most of the next day trying to track down an escaped bunny rabbit — not the camp mascot, but the camp mascot understudy, a tradition they implemented after the fourth time the platypus ate their newest choice — and then trying to suss out who had let the rabbit out of its cage, only to ultimately learn that they’ve been played all along by a group of rebel campers who’ve secretly formed a Platypus Appreciation Society, a.k.a. the Pussy Riot, and who are even now attempting to put their rebellion into action by placing dynamite sticks under the Mess Hall. 

Fortunately, their Guy Fawkes masks make them pretty easy to spot in the crowd, and so they’re quickly apprehended. David will deal with the question of just where and how they learned to make dynamite in the morning.

“I hate to say something as obvious as ‘that escalated quickly,’” he comments to Max as they return to their cabin, “but that escalated quickly.”

He gets no response, and looks over to find that Max has faceplanted onto his bed, his eyes already closed.

“Max?” David tries. After a moment, he sighs fondly and moves to take Max’s shoes off. He slips the Skechers off one foot and then the next and sets them quietly beside the bed before straightening and studying the person at the other end of it. 

People usually look younger when they sleep, but David is so unused to seeing Max this way that to him Max still seems older and all grown up. When he was a kid, all his cockiness was sharper because it masked all the deep insecurity he used to feel about himself and his relationships. Now, though, now, David thinks, there’s actual self-assurance beneath the facade, and it makes Max’s facade seem smoother. Gentler. More mature. 

David hopes Camp Campbell helped give him that, helped smooth his edges and make him this poised, confident creature with his knowing smiles and his calm effrontery. He hopes, on some level, that he helped give Max that.

He can’t help himself; he reaches down and ruffles Max’s hair, just once for old time’s sake. Or at least he intends it to be just once, but Max’s hair is so soft and thick that David keeps his hand there a moment — a moment longer than he should, a moment when the whole world tilts and he feels a deep and pervasive sense of embarrassment and shame, before Max suddenly shifts, arching ever so slightly into his touch.

“Mmm,” he murmurs. “Feels good.”

“I,” David says, hand and voice suddenly frozen in fear. “I.”

“David,” Max says, still clearly half-asleep. “Don’t stop.” 

And that’s when David knows he absolutely has to stop. Slowly, slowly, he extricates his hand from Max’s wonderful jumble of curls, and says softly, “Go to sleep, Max,” instead of doing anything as insane and dangerous as obeying him. Max mumbles something incoherent and cuddles into his pillow, and David drags the covers over him before hightailing it to the shower.

The next morning David makes a point to be up and at ‘em and down at the mess hall well before Max is even out of bed; but this just proves to be a giant strategic miscalculation, because when Max finally stumbles into the mess hall a few minutes after breakfast has officially started, he’s yawning and stumbling around like he’s not yet fully awake, and it’s so adorable and kittenish that David can’t stop sending all sorts of amused glances in Max’s direction, even though he feels like his emotions are on display and gallingly public for anyone to see.

He’s _seventeen_ , David thinks fiercely, stabbing a boiled potato with all his might.

Max sits down next to him and knocks his knee against David’s. “Hey,” he says. “Sleep well?”

David stuffs the potato in his mouth and chews furiously.

“For a 26-year-old,” Max continues blithely, “you sure snore like an old man.”

David elbows him. Max elbows him back.

“I feel like this is going to be such a productive summer for everyone,” says Gwen from across the table.

David and Max spend the morning teaching kids how to tie sailor’s knots, which is a good idea until one of the kids who got signed up for the pro-life version of camp announces that the umbilical cord is God’s version of a double sheet bend. Then she suggests that they all attempt to tangle themselves in the rope like fetuses, and David has to distract her by letting Max tie him up the way he used to as a kid. Then one of the kids who signed up for the ex-gay ministry version of the camp reminds everyone that this is how David would have been burnt at the stake if he’d been caught practicing homosexuality in 17th-century Europe. 

“Well, I don’t actually think I would have been upside down,” David ventures, which is when the camper who thought she was signing up for a camp on climate change denial tries to argue that it would have been harder to set David on fire because the earth was actually three times hotter in the 17th century. Which is when the creationist camper starts arguing that no, actually, God created the world exactly the way it is now and the idea that it’s changed at all since the year 3,000 B.C. is a liberal conspiracy.

“What the hell kind of campers have you been letting in here?” Max says, eying David from right-side up. 

“I can explain at a later point when all the blood isn’t rushing to my head,” says David, who is eye-level with Max’s knees and can’t stop gawking at them because knees look even more alien from upside down than they normally do, and Max is fit and his calves are nicely toned so his knees are a topography of tendons and — okay, really.

“Do you want me to untie you?” Max asks.

“I’m good here, really,” David says, slightly mortified, grateful for the fact that he has an alibi for his rapidly reddening face. 

Max smirks. “Nonsense,” he says grandly, and smacks David on his ass — which is currently covered by rope, so it’s less a butt pat and more a weirdly placed twang. “Kids, let’s get David down before he passes out.”

With the kids all chipping in, it takes rather more time to cut David down than it probably should have, but eventually he’s properly on his feet again, breathless and ruddy and mussed, and Max’s eyes have gone dark at the sight of him, and there are kids excitedly swarming around David’s feet and David knows he should probably be looking anywhere else besides Max’s intent, sharp face, but he can’t _help_ it, this _kid_ , he’s always upended all David’s carefully laid plans and ideas, especially where camp is concerned, so why should it be any different now?

Except, of course, everything is much, much different now. 

“Right,” he says. “Thanks for the help.”

“I think Jen and Stacey are making out behind the mess hall,” says the ex-gay camper smugly. 

“Who?” Max asks.

“Miss pro-life and Miss creationist,” says David.

“Well, then,” says Max, sending him a wink — a _wink_! — “I’d call that one of God’s miracles, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure our kids are too young to be making out behind the mess hall,” David tries weakly.

“Not too young to be sent to an ex-gay camp,” says one of the other ex-gay campers. The two of them exchange high-fives.

“This isn’t actually an ex-gay camp,” says David. “No one here is getting de-gayed.”

Ex-gay camper #1 snorts. “Uh, yeah, we _know_ ,” he says pointedly.

“I mean, look at the two of you,” says the other ex-gay camper.

 _The two of us_? David thinks fuzzily, but Max grins broadly at them all and says, “Right, exactly. So now that we’re all on the same page, why don’t you guys go practice tying your sailing knots down at the boathouse and let us deal with Jen and Stacey’s makeout sessions?”

No one moves. “Uh. Please?” Max adds. 

“Are the two of _you_ going to make out behind the mess hall?” asks one of the campers.

“Absolutely,” says Max, and, “Absolutely not,” says David. They send each other the world’s most awkward exchange of glances.

“Lame,” says one of the campers.

“That’s ableist,” says another camper.

“This is boring,” says a third. “This camp sucks.”

Max beams at David. 

The afternoon is spent tracking down the source of the dynamite. Which actually proves to take much less time than expected because Max is like, “Oh. It’s probably at the spooky mansion on Spooky Island.”

“That’s not its real name,” David says automatically. “It’s Campbell Island and the mansion is Campbell Mansion.” Then he registers what Max is saying. “You’ve been over there? How have you been over there? That island is off-limits.”

Max looks at him with fond exasperation. “Were you even a camper here or were you just a mini-counselor? Everybody’s been over to Spooky Island. Just ask the Quartermaster. He used to hold, like, Stanley Kubrick LARP retreats there. Don’t ask.”

“But you were ten,” David insists. “You were far too young to be operating a boat. By yourself. In the dark.” 

“I was technically twelve by the time I left this place,” Max says dismissively, “and besides, _someone_ taught me how to sail.”

“I didn’t know that imparting my nautical wisdom would lead you to nefarious activities like sneaking across the lake and breaking and entering.”

“And yet I survived. I even, arguably, turned out okay.” Max grins. “Besides, we got to meet Jasper.”

“Jasper? Jasper the kid I went to camp with?”

“No,” says Max patiently, “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Jasper, the friendly ghost. Who was probably already dead when you were at camp with him.”

“Are you _sure_ you turned out okay?” David says dubiously.

“Look,” says Max assuredly. “You’re 26. You were at camp when you were my age, right? You told us your pal Jasper was wearing brand-new L.A. Gear light-ups. He’d have to have been dead at least eight or nine years before you showed up for that math to check out. Besides, him being dead already explains why he didn’t die in whatever mega-fall he had off that cliff when you were with him.”

David stares. “How can you possibly remember all that?”

Max shrugs. “It’s only been five years since I left here. I remember stuff.” He hops gracefully onto the nearest boat next to the dock and looks back at David. “Come on, old man,” he says, stretching out his hand to help David on board. “I’ll show you to Camp Camp’s special mad scientist laboratory.”

“You know, lampshading our age difference isn’t going to make it less true,” David says lightly. He takes Max’s hand anyway as he says it. Max pulls him on board and then tugs him just a bit closer. The boat bobs, and their bodies align for a moment before he steps back, pulling his hand away. His fingers are warm, tingling.

“Our age difference doesn’t really matter to me,” Max says calmly. “I don’t think it’ll matter to anyone except you.”

“That’s exactly what the person on the younger end of an age difference would say,” David says, untying the boat from the pier and pushing off. Their boats are small: the one they’re on is basically just a dinghy with a sailyard attached. They’re fine for teaching one or two kids at a time the basics of sailing, but Max and David in one of them together leaves them with barely any room to maneuver without their hips bumping or their arms touching. Max unfurls the sail and points the boat in the right direction, and David reaches out to steady him when a wave jolts them. Max turns around, and something in him seems to still and turn quiet, serious as he takes in David’s expression. He lifts his hands, telegraphing his movements, and slowly rests his hands lightly along David’s waistband.

“Has it really only been five years since you left here?” David asks him. His throat is dry again.

Max shrugs. “Longer for me than you, I think,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” David says automatically. “High school is rough.”

Max shrugs again, but he’s smiling curiously. “Like I said, I turned out okay.”

“I can see that,” David says, because he can, oh, boy, can he.

Max’s breath goes shaky, and he slips his arms up past David’s shoulders to loop around David’s neck. David has no idea how this happened, or why it doesn’t feel like it’s happening _fast_ at all.

“Hey,” Max says, and he leans in and kisses David slowly on the mouth.

It’s a wet, unsteady kiss because they’re on a boat, and Max is trying to be gentle, searching, which is hard to do when you’re on an uneven platform that’s bobbing up and down beneath you. But still, it’s sweet, it’s lovely, it makes David’s heart hammer against his ribcage, and he somehow winds up with his arms wrapped around Max’s waist holding him in place. 

When they part, Max’s eyes are huge and lit with hope and emotion and beauty, and David looks at him and thinks of the little boy who first showed up at camp seven years ago with a chip on his shoulder the size of this lake they’re on, and how much that little boy trusted him to always do the right thing, and he takes a deep breath and says all in a rush, “You got through high school, and you turned out amazing, Max, and when you go to college, college is going to be the biggest adventure of your life, and—”

“Oh, look,” Max interrupts him, as if he hasn’t spoken at all. He trails his hand absently down the front of David’s shirt. “We’re here.”

They are, in fact, at Spooky Island, er, Campbell Island. And, wow, it is a lot spookier than David has ever really noticed before.

“Did you really see a ghost here?” he asks, absurdly grateful for the interruption.

“I’ll reintroduce you,” Max says, still holding his hand and tugging him off the boat, “unless it’s some kind of Calvin and Hobbes thing where he disappears when you get older.”

“I don’t think that was actually in Calvin and Hobbes,” David says, staring at their joined hands. He’s going to let go any second, now. Any second.

“Yeah, but we all know that’s how the story ends,” Max says as they make their way past the dock and up the weedy embankment.

“It doesn’t have to,” says David. “Somewhere Calvin and Hobbes can stay best friends forever, eternally young, always playing in the summer sunlight. Isn’t that what we all want?”

Max looks back at him and impulsively draws David in close for another kiss. They’re on steady ground and this one is longer, firmer. David possibly moans into it, and Max lets out a breathy, irresistible gasp that is going straight into David’s memory box in a drawer marked guiltiest treasures that currently consists of exactly two kisses and that gasp. 

“That’s the kind of thing _you_ want,” Max says when they break apart, his lips red and puffy, smiling. “You’re such a kid.”

“ _I’m_ the kid?” David says, unable to help smiling back despite the whirlwind of emotions currently caught in his throat. “Thought I was the old man.”

“Only on the outside,” says Max, and he pries open the door of Spooky Mansion.

It takes them about a half hour of stumbling around in the dark looking for lights — not counting the row of creepy candelabras in the bedroom, which Max insists they shouldn’t touch, and David is taking his word for it — and the entrance to the laboratory before they find it. Sure enough, there’s a stash of chemicals and dangerous lab equipment and some highly flammable material scattered around the place.

“Who do you think masterminded all this?” David says, staring around.

Max shrugs. “I don’t know. That Nathan kid, prolly. He seems kinda lonely. Sorta like he's trying out a lot of different shit to figure out what will let him fit in.”

“Nathan?” David blinks at him. “But he’s so polite.” He wonders if Max is seeing parts of himself in Nathan, who _does_ seem kinda lonely, now that he mentions it. But then again, Max has never been polite.

Max raises his eyebrows. “You are way too trusting. Remember when you got me a BB gun? I nearly shot you, and you were like, good job, buddy!”

David grins. “You didn’t, though, it was all fine.”

“You spoiled me,” Max says with an eyeroll. “You let me get away with so much shit.”

“Yeah, well,” David answers. _Somebody needed to._ He doesn’t finish that thought out loud.

“I think Nathan seems like the type to mastermind a bomb threat without knowing what he’s doing,” Max says, picking up one of the beakers and eying whatever’s in it. 

David sighs. “We’ll have to call his parents,” he says glumly. He hates talking to parents. “It might not have been him, but none of the kids in the masks are talking, and using the threat of parents getting involved usually makes them start singing.”

Max grimaces but says nothing.

“I don’t like it either,” David admits.

“Let me talk to him first,” Max says, sounding as if the suggestion is being dragged out of him. 

David turns and gawks at him. “Really?”

Max busies himself with unhooking a bunsen burner. “Sure,” he mumbles. “Kids like it when older kids pay attention to them. Maybe he’ll talk to me before you."

David beams at him.

“Ugh, don’t look so _happy_ about it, geez,” says Max.

“It’s just, you’ve really grown up,” says David before he can help it, and then at Max’s look, a mix of amusement and exasperation, it all suddenly hits him: Max has grown up.

Max. Is. A grownup. He’s an adult. 

Oh, sure, he won’t be _legally_ an adult for another two months, but this is Max, Max who’s always been ahead of the curve, who’s always been more astute than everyone else around him, who always seemed to David like an old soul in a shrimp’s body, who’s suddenly just... caught up to himself. 

“You’re staring at me,” says Max.

David blinks at him, unsure how to put this supremely ridiculous revelation into words, and Max says, “Oh,” after a moment. His face clears, like he suddenly understands David’s convoluted non sequitur thought process, which is hilarious because David doesn’t even understand it himself.

He digs out his phone.

“What are you doing?” David asks him blankly, watching Max typing something into his search bar. 

“I’m Googling,” Max says shortly. 

“Googling what?”

“The age of consent in Colorado,” says Max, and he holds his phone out to show it to David.

“I know the age of consent in Colorado,” David says blankly. 

“Yeah, and now you know that I know it, too,” says Max.

“Okay,” says David, frantically trying to regain his foothold in this conversation. “But—”

Max steps into his space and leans him back against the lab table. “So just let me consent to this already,” he says, and kisses him.

This time there’s nothing gentle about it. This time it’s hungry — this time all David can think of is that Max isn’t a boy any longer: he’s a man, it’s another man he’s kissing, a gorgeous, sweet, smart man with lush lips and firm abs and a satisfying cock and an ass David has been wanting to get his hands on for the last two days. He finally does get his hands on it, and Max moans and grinds against his cock as he presses against the table. 

“Fuck,” David blurts, and Max pulls back long enough to huff a laugh. 

“That’s only the second time I’ve ever heard you swear, you know?” Max says fondly. “You’re ridiculous.” He leans back in and kisses David’s jaw, and David arches into it for a moment before pulling himself together and re-righting his mental capacities.

“Hang on,” he says. He leans back and cups Max’s chin in his hand, halting his trajectory along David’s neck. “You and me,” he says. “What do you want here?”

“I just wanted to see you,” says Max. He smiles. “And then I saw you and I wanted you.”

David expels a shaky breath. “I... I want you, too,” he says. 

Max smirks. “Yeah, I _know_ ,” he says. “I can’t believe we’re talking about it in the middle of the world’s gunkiest dungeon or whatever the hell this place is, though.” He leans in and presses their hips together again, and David has to take a moment to collect himself.

“This could be — I don’t want to push you for anything,” he says firmly. “We can be as casual or as, as committed as you want, or we can stop right here. Seriously, this is _entirely_ about you, do you understand?”

Max kisses him again. “Dude,” he says. “David. You think I don’t know what this will be like? You make a big production out of everything. You won’t be able to help making a big production out of this. And I’ll pretend like I hate it but secretly I’ll love it. You know I will.”

“I’m not going to make a big production out of anything if you don’t want me to, Max,” David says, more earnest than he’s maybe ever been, and that includes the time he had to write the letter to Max’s parents begging them to come to the next year’s Parent’s Day weekend because they had an awesome kid who loved them and needed so much love himself. “It’s just.” He takes Max’s hand, then takes Max’s other hand for good measure. “You know how much I’m going to want to make this okay for you.”

“I know,” Max says. He sounds... charmed. It’s a new sound, and David loves it, and David is suddenly... overwhelmed by this — not by this moment, but by the _possibility_ of, of him and Max, of Max himself. David cares about Max so much. David loves Max. But all that caring, all his pride and protectiveness and concern — all of that is part of the past. He doesn’t know this new person in front of him yet, not really. This new, suave, self-assured young man who’s been hitting on him all week like he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it — this new Max with his sharp smiles and his sleek mouth and his confidence and the way he keeps glancing at David’s trousers like he’s already strategizing exactly how he wants to take them off — this new adult version of Max is warm and witty and sultry and sweet and unpredictable, and David can’t _wait_ to find out how he feels about him.

But maybe Max is still a little predictable, because he’s giving David a dubious look, and David knows that he’s still trusting in David to do the right thing and not freak out about this. 

“Just... don’t freak out about this,” says Max. “Let’s just enjoy it.”

“You’re incredible,” says David, tugging him close again. “I’m going to enjoy this so much.”

“Yeah, you are,” says Max, and winks at him, before sinking to his knees right there on the grimy chemical-soaked floor.

 

 

 

“I think we’re probably supposed to be steering this boat somehow,” says David dreamily, running his hand lazily along Max’s collarbone, down over his chest where his shirt has inexplicably become totally unbuttoned. Max is lying half on top of him, the two of them stretched out and clinging to one another in the bottom of the boat. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but it’s also great. Sticky, but great.

“Do you think the FBI have cameras on the lake?” Max asks, yawning. 

“If they do and they’re watching this boat, we’re definitely losing our license to operate this camp,” says David, strangely resigned to his fate.

“I have condoms back at the cabin,” says Max. “And I’m on Prep, so you can fuck me all you want.”

“Jesus,” says David. “I’m not getting used to this.”

Max stretches and arches up, leaning over him. He’s backlit against the sun and the light arcs off his bony shoulders, his wavy hair, the figure that’s toned and fit and miraculously — for now, at least — all David’s to have his fill of.

They’re going to do so much talking, he resolves frantically, as Max leans down and kisses him. They’re going to talk about the future and triple-check every new step they take and David is going to send Max off to college with no expectations and no reins and nothing but hope, and it’s — it’s going to be fine. They’ll be fine. No matter what this becomes — he sighs into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Max and pulling him close — Max is going to be okay, and he’ll be okay, and if it’s meant to be, then they’ll be okay together. For now, though...

“It’s cool,” Max says, pulling back, his smile the most gorgeous thing David has ever seen. “You don’t have to get used to it. We’ve got the whole summer. We’ve got plenty of time.”


End file.
